Manolis Kellis: Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything | Lex Fridman Podcast #142

1. 0:00 – 2:18

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Manolis Kellis, his fourth time on the podcast. He's a professor at MIT and head of the MIT Computational Biology Group. Since this is episode number 142, and 42, as we all know, is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, according to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, we decided to talk about this unanswerable question of the meaning of life in whatever way we two descendants of apes could muster. From biology to psychology to metaphysics and to music. Quick mention of each sponsor, followed by some thoughts related to the episode. Thanks to Grammarly, which is a service for checking spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and readability. Athletic Greens, the all-in-one drink that I start every day with to cover all my nutritional bases. And Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that the opening 40 minutes of the conversation are all about the many songs that formed the soundtrack to the journey of Manolis's life. It was a happy accident for me to discover yet another dimension of depth to the fascinating mind of Manolis. I include links to YouTube versions of many of the songs we mention in the description and overlay lyrics on occasion. But if you're just listening to this without listening to the songs or watching the video, I hope you still might enjoy, as I did, the passion that Manolis has for music, his singing of the little excerpts from the songs, and in general, the meaning we discuss that we pull from the different songs. If music is not your thing, I do give timestamps to the less musical and more philosophical parts of the conversation. I hope you enjoy this little experiment in conversation about music and life. If you do, please subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @LexFridman. And now, here's my conversation with Manolis Kellis.

2. 2:18 – 41:51

   Music and life

   1. LFLex Fridman2:18

      You mentioned Leonard Cohen and the song Hallelujah as a beautiful song. So what are the three songs you draw the most meaning from about life?

   2. MKManolis Kellis2:29

      Don't get me started. So there's really countless songs that have marked me, that have sort of, uh, shaped me in periods of joy and in periods of sadness. Uh, my son likes to joke that I have a song for every sentence he will say-

   3. LFLex Fridman2:44

      Yeah.

   4. MKManolis Kellis2:44

      ... 'cause very often, I will break into song with a sentence he'll say. (laughs) My wife calls me the radio 'cause I, I can sort of recite hundreds of songs, uh, that have really shaped me. So it's very, it's gonna be very hard to just pick a few, so I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about my song transition-

   5. LFLex Fridman3:00

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MKManolis Kellis3:00

      ... as I've grown up. In Greece, it was very much about, as I told you before, the misery-

   7. LFLex Fridman3:05

      Yeah.

   8. MKManolis Kellis3:05

      ... the poverty, but also overcoming adversity. So some of the songs that I, that have really shaped me are, uh, Haris Alexiou, for example, is one of my favorite singers, uh, in Greece. And then, uh, there's also really just old traditional songs that my parents used to listen to, like one of them is (singing) , which is basically, "Oh, if I was rich." And the song is painting this beautiful picture about all the noises that you hear in the neighborhood, in his poor neighborhood. The train going by, the priest walking to the church, and the kids crying next door and all of that. And he says, "With all of that, I'm having trouble falling asleep and dreaming. If I was rich..." And then, he was like, you know, um, break into that, so it's this j- juxtaposition between the spirit and the sublime-

   9. LFLex Fridman3:56

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MKManolis Kellis3:57

       ... and then the physical and the harsh reality. It's just not having troubles, not-

   11. LFLex Fridman4:01

       Mm-hmm.

   12. MKManolis Kellis4:02

       ... not, not being miserable.

   13. LFLex Fridman4:03

       Yeah.

   14. MKManolis Kellis4:03

       So basically, rich to him just means n- out of my misery, basically.

   15. LFLex Fridman4:07

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. MKManolis Kellis4:08

       Uh, (laughs) and then also being able to travel, being able to sort of be the captain of a ship and, you know, see the world and stuff like that. So it's just s- such beautiful imagery.

   17. LFLex Fridman4:16

       So many of the Greek songs, just like the poetry we talked about, they acknowledge the, the cruelty, the difficulty of life-

   18. MKManolis Kellis4:22

       Yeah.

   19. LFLex Fridman4:22

       ... but are longing for a better life.

   20. MKManolis Kellis4:24

       That's exactly right, and another one is (Greek) , and this is one of those songs that has, like, a fast and joyful half and a slow and sad half, and he goes back and forth between them. And he's like, (singing) . So poor, you know, basically, uh, it's the state of being poor, I don't, I don't even know if there's a word for that-

   21. LFLex Fridman4:48

       (laughs)

   22. MKManolis Kellis4:49

       (laughs) ... in English. And then, fast part is (singing) . So and then, it's like, oh, you know, um, basically, p- like, the state of being poor and misery, uh, you know, for you, I write all my songs, et cetera. And then the fast part is, "In your arms grew up and suffered," and, you know, stood up and, you know, rose. Um, "Man with clear vision."

   23. LFLex Fridman5:18

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MKManolis Kellis5:18

       This whole concept of taking on the world with nothing to lose because you've seen the worst of it. This imagery of (singing) . So it's describing the young men as cyprus trees.

   25. LFLex Fridman5:33

       Mm-hmm.

   26. MKManolis Kellis5:34

       And that's probably one of my earliest exposure to a metaphor, to sort of, you know, this very rich imagery. And I love about the fact that I was reading a story to my kids the other day and it was dark, and my daughter, who's six, is like, "Oh, can I please see the pictures?" And Jonathan, who's, um, eight, so, so my daughter Cleo, uh, is like, "Oh, let's look at the pictures." And, and my son Jonathan, he's like, "But, but Cleo, if you look at the pictures, it's just an image. If you just close your eyes and listen, it's a video."

   27. LFLex Fridman6:03

       (laughs)

   28. MKManolis Kellis6:04

       (laughs)

   29. LFLex Fridman6:04

       That's brilliant.

   30. MKManolis Kellis6:05

       It's beautiful.
3. 41:51 – 47:52

   The number 42

   1. LFLex Fridman41:51

      Let's, uh, talk about life from, human life from perhaps other perspective and its meaning. So this is episode 142. Uh, there is perhaps, uh, an ab- absurdly, uh, deep meaning to the number 42 that, uh, the, our culture has, has elevated, so this is a perfect time to talk about the meaning of life. We've talked about it already, but do you think this question that's so simple and so seemingly absurd has value, of what is the meaning of life? Is it something that raising the question and trying to answer it, is that a ridiculous pursuit, or is there some value? Is it answerable at all?

   2. MKManolis Kellis42:39

      So first of all, I, I feel like we owe it to your listeners to say, "Why 42?"

   3. LFLex Fridman42:44

      Sure.

   4. MKManolis Kellis42:44

      (laughs)

   5. LFLex Fridman42:46

      (laughs)

   6. MKManolis Kellis42:46

      So first of all, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy came up with 42 as basically a random num- number. Just, you know, uh, the author just pulled it out of a hat. And he's admitted so. He said, "Well, 42 just seemed like a just random number as any." Um, but in fact there's many numbers that are, uh, linked to 42. So, uh, 42, again, just, just to, um, summarize, is the answer that this super mega computer that had computed for a million years with the most powerful computer in the world had come up with, at some point, you know, the computer says, "Um, I have an answer." And they're like, "What?" (laughs) It's like, "You're not gonna like it." (laughs) And like, "What is it?" "It's 42." (laughs) And then the irony is that they had forgotten, of course, what the question was.

   7. LFLex Fridman43:33

      Yes. (laughs)

   8. MKManolis Kellis43:34

      (laughs) So now they have to build a bigger computer to figure out what the question was.

   9. LFLex Fridman43:37

      What the question is, yeah.

   10. MKManolis Kellis43:37

       To which the answer is 42. So as I was turning 42, I basically sort of researched, uh, why 42 is such a cool number. And it turns out that, uh ... And I, and I put together this little passage that I was explaining to all those, uh, guests to my, uh, 42nd birthday party while we were talking about the meaning of life. And, um, I basically talked about how 42 is the angle at which light reflects off of water to create a rainbow.

   11. LFLex Fridman44:05

       Mm-hmm.

   12. MKManolis Kellis44:05

       And it's so beautiful because the rainbow is basically the c- combination of sort of, it's been raining, but there's hope, 'cause the sun just came out.

   13. LFLex Fridman44:13

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MKManolis Kellis44:13

       So it's a very beautiful number there. So 42 is also the sum of all rows and columns of a magic cube that contains all consecutive in- integers starting at one. So basically if you, if you take all the integers between one and however many vertices there are, the sums is always 42.

   15. LFLex Fridman44:29

       Hm.

   16. MKManolis Kellis44:30

       42 is the only number left under 100 for which the equation of X to the cube plus Y to the cube plus Z to the cube is N, and was not known to not have a solution. And now, it's the, you know, it's the only one that actually has a solution. 42 is also 101010 in binary.

   17. LFLex Fridman44:49

       Hm.

   18. MKManolis Kellis44:50

       Again, the yin and the yang, the good and the evil, one and zero, the balance of the force. 42 is the number of chromosomes for the giant panda.

   19. LFLex Fridman44:58

       (laughs)

   20. MKManolis Kellis44:58

       For the giant panda. (laughs) I know it's totally random.

   21. LFLex Fridman45:02

       Or is it?

   22. MKManolis Kellis45:02

       It's an auspicious symbol of great strength-

   23. LFLex Fridman45:04

       Yeah.

   24. MKManolis Kellis45:04

       ... coupled with peace, friendship, gentle temperament, harmony, balance, and friendship. Whose black and white colors, again, symbolize yin and yang. The reason why it's the symbol for China is exactly the strength, but yet peace, and so on and so forth. So 42 chromosomes. It takes light 10-42 seconds to cross the diameter of a proton, connecting the two fundamental dimensions of space and time. 42 is the number of times a piece of paper should be folded to reach beyond the moon. (laughs) So, um, which is what I assume my students mean when they ask, uh, that their paper reaches for the stars, I just tell them, "Just fold it a bunch of times." (laughs)

   25. LFLex Fridman45:47

       (laughs)

   26. MKManolis Kellis45:48

       Um, 42 is, uh, the number of Messier object 42, which is, uh, Orion, and that's, you know, uh, one of the most famous, um, galaxies. It's, uh, I think also the place where we can actually see the center of our galaxy. Uh, 42 is the numeric representation of the star symbol in ASCII.

   27. LFLex Fridman46:07

       (laughs)

   28. MKManolis Kellis46:08

       Which is very useful when searching for the stars.

   29. LFLex Fridman46:10

       Right. Yeah.

   30. MKManolis Kellis46:10

       And also a regex for life, the universe, and everything. So star. (laughs)
4. 47:52 – 50:32

   The question about the meaning of life

   1. MKManolis Kellis47:52

   2. LFLex Fridman47:52

      Yeah.

   3. MKManolis Kellis47:52

      So anyway, so, uh, now that we've spoken about why 42, uh, why do we search for meaning?

   4. LFLex Fridman47:57

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MKManolis Kellis47:58

      And, uh, you're asking, you know, will that search ultimately lead to our destruction? And my f- my thinking is exactly the opposite. So basically that asking about meaning is something that's so inherent to human nature. It's something that makes life beautiful and that makes it worth living. And that searching for meaning is actually the point. It's not the finding it. I think when you found it, you're dead.

   6. LFLex Fridman48:22

      Yeah.

   7. MKManolis Kellis48:22

      Don't, don't ever be satisfied that, you know, I've got it. So I like to say that life is lived forward, but it only makes sense backward. And I don't remember whose quote that is, but the, the, the whole search itself is the meaning. And what I love about it is that...There's a double search going on. There's a search in every one of us, through our own lives, to find meaning, and then there's a search which is happening for humanity itself, to find our meaning. And we, as humans, like to look at animals and say, "Of course they have a meaning." Like a dog has its meaning, it's just a bunch of instincts, you know, running around, loving everything. Um, you know, remember our joke with the cat and the dog? (laughs)

   8. LFLex Fridman49:11

      (laughs) Yeah. Cat has no meaning.

   9. MKManolis Kellis49:13

      In the sense where... (laughs)

   10. LFLex Fridman49:13

       (laughs) Yeah.

   11. MKManolis Kellis49:14

       No, no. So, so, um, and I- I'm noticing the yin yang symbol right here-

   12. LFLex Fridman49:20

       Yeah.

   13. MKManolis Kellis49:20

       ...with this whole panda, black and white, and the zero one zero-

   14. LFLex Fridman49:23

       You were on fire with that 42.

   15. MKManolis Kellis49:25

       (laughs)

   16. LFLex Fridman49:25

       Some of those are gold. ASCII value for, uh, the star symbol.

   17. MKManolis Kellis49:29

       Oh.

   18. LFLex Fridman49:29

       Damn.

   19. MKManolis Kellis49:30

       Anyway. So, so, basically, in my view, the, the search for meaning and the act of, uh, searching for something more meaningful is life's meaning by itself. B- the fact that we kind of always hope that, yes, maybe for animals that's not the case, but maybe humans have something that we should be doing, and something else, and it's not just about procreation, it's not just about dominance, it's not just about strength and feeding, et cetera. Like, we're the one species that spends such a tiny little minority of its time feeding.

   20. LFLex Fridman50:02

       Mm-hmm.

   21. MKManolis Kellis50:03

       That we have this enormous, you know, huge cognitive capability that we can just use for all kinds of other stuff.

   22. LFLex Fridman50:11

       (laughs)

   23. MKManolis Kellis50:11

       And that's where art comes in. That's where, you know, the healthy mind comes in with, you know, exploring all of these different aspects that are just not directly tied to, um, to a purpose, that's not directly tied to a function. It's really just the, the playing of life, the, you know, not, not for particular reason.

5. 50:32 – 56:16

   Are humans unique in the universe?

   1. MKManolis Kellis50:32

   2. LFLex Fridman50:32

      Do you think, uh, this thing we got, this, this mind is unique in the universe, in terms of how difficult it is to build?

   3. MKManolis Kellis50:42

      So-

   4. LFLex Fridman50:43

      Is it possible that we are the, the most beautiful thing that the universe has constructed?

   5. MKManolis Kellis50:49

      Yeah. Both the most beautiful and the most ugly, but certainly the most complex. So, look at evolutionary time. Uh, the dinosaurs ruled the earth for 135 million years. We've been around for a million years. (laughs) So, uh, one versus 135. So, dinosaurs were extinct, you know, about 60 million years ago, and mammals that had been happily evolving as tiny little creatures for 30 million years then took over the planet, and then, you know, dramatically radiated about 60 million years ago. Out of these mammals came the neocortex formation. So, basically, the neocortex, which is sort of the outer layer of our brain, compared to our "reptilian" brain, which we share the structure of with all of the dinosaurs, they didn't have that, and yet they ruled the planet.

   6. LFLex Fridman51:35

      Mm-hmm.

   7. MKManolis Kellis51:36

      So, how many other planets have still, you know, mindless dinosaurs, where strength was the only dimension, uh, ruling the planet? So, there was something weird that annihilated the dinosaurs. And again, you could look at biblical things of sort of God coming and wiping out his creatures and-

   8. LFLex Fridman51:53

      Yes.

   9. MKManolis Kellis51:53

      ... to make room for the next ones. So, um, the mammals basically sort of took over the planet, and then grew this cognitive capability of this general purpose machine. And primates pushed that to extreme, and humans, among primates, have just exploded that hardware.

   10. LFLex Fridman52:15

       Mm-hmm.

   11. MKManolis Kellis52:15

       But that hardware is selected for survival. It's selected for procreation. It's initially selected with this very simple Darwinian view of the world, of random mutation, ruthless selection, and then selection for making more of yourself. If you look at human cognition, it's gone down a weird evolutionary path.

   12. LFLex Fridman52:43

       Hm.

   13. MKManolis Kellis52:43

       In the sense that we are expending an enormous amount of energy on this apparatus between our ears, that is wasting, what, 15% of our bodily energy? 20%? Like some enormous percentage of our calories go to function our brain. No other species makes that big of a commitment. That has basically taken energetic changes for efficiency on the metabolic side, for humanity, to basically power that thing. And our brain is both enormously more efficient than other brains, but also, despite this efficiency, enormously more energy-consuming.

   14. LFLex Fridman53:24

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MKManolis Kellis53:25

       So, and if you look at just the sheer folds that the human brain has, again, our skull could only grow so much before it could no longer go through the pelvic opening and kill the mother at every birth. So, but yet the folds continued, effectively creating just so much more capacity. The evolutionary, uh, context in which this was made is enormously fascinating, and it has to do with other humans that we have now killed off or that have gone extinct, and that has now created this weird place of humans on the planet as the only species that has this enormous hardware. So, that can basically make us think that there's something very weird and unique that happened in human evolution, that perhaps has not been recreated elsewhere. Maybe the asteroid didn't hit, you know, sister Earth-

   16. LFLex Fridman54:18

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MKManolis Kellis54:18

       ... and dinosaurs are still ruling, and, you know, any kind of proto-human is squished and eaten for breakfast basically. Um, however, we're not as unique as we like to think, because there was this enormous diversity of other humanlike forms. And once you make it to that stage where you have a neocortex-like explosion of, wow, we're now competing on intelligence, and we're now competing on social structures, and we're now competing on larger and larger groups and being able to...... coordinate, and being able to have empathy. The concept of empathy, the concept of an ego, the concept of a self, of self-awareness, comes probably from being able to project another person's intentions to understand what they mean when you have these large cognitive groups, l- large social groups. So, me being able to sort of create a mental model of how you think may have come before I was able to create a, a personal mental model of how do I think. So this introspection probably came after this sort of projection, and this empathy, which basically means, you know, passion, pathos, suffering, (laughs) but basically sensing. So basically, empathy means feeling what you're feeling, trying to project your emotional state onto my cognitive apparatus. And I think that is what eventually led to this enormous cognitive explosion that happened in humanity. So, you know, life itself, in my view, is, uh, inevitable on every planet.

   18. LFLex Fridman56:03

       Inevitable?

   19. MKManolis Kellis56:04

       Inevitable. But the evolution of life to self-awareness and cognition, and all the incredible things that humans have done, you know, that might not be as inevitable.

   20. LFLex Fridman56:14

       That's your intuition. So,

6. 56:16 – 1:08:22

   Human civilization

   1. LFLex Fridman56:16

      uh, if you were to sort of, uh, estimate and bet some money on it, if we re-ran Earth a million times, uh, would what we got now be the most special thing? And how often would it be? So, scientifically speaking, uh, how repeatable is this experiment? (laughs)

   2. MKManolis Kellis56:36

      So, this whole cognitive revolution?

   3. LFLex Fridman56:38

      Yes.

   4. MKManolis Kellis56:40

      Hm. Maybe not. Maybe not. Basically, I feel that the longevity of, you know, dinosaurs suggests that it was not quite inevitable, that we, um, that we humans eventually, uh, made it.

   5. LFLex Fridman56:56

      Well, you're also implying one thing here. You're saying, you're implying that humans also don't have this longevity. Th- this is the interesting question. So with the Fermi paradox, the idea that the basic question is like, if, if the universe has a lot of, uh, alien life forms in it, why haven't we seen them?

   6. MKManolis Kellis57:16

      Yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman57:16

      And one thought is that there's a great filter, or multiple great filters, that basically would destroy intelligent civilizations. Like, we, this thing that we, you know, this multi-folding brain that kee- keeps growing may not be such a big feature. It might be useful for survival, but it like, takes us, um, down a, uh, side road that is a very short one, with a quick dead end. What do you think about that?

   8. MKManolis Kellis57:42

      So, I think the universe is enormous, not just in space, but also in time. And the, the pretense that, you know, the last blink of an instant that we've been able to send radio waves is when somebody should've been paying attention to our planet, is a little ridiculous.

   9. LFLex Fridman58:02

      (laughs)

   10. MKManolis Kellis58:03

       (laughs) So, my, my, you know, what I love about Star Wars-

   11. LFLex Fridman58:06

       Yes.

   12. MKManolis Kellis58:07

       ... is a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It's not like some distant future, it's a long, long time ago. What I love about it is that basically says, you know, evolution and civilization are just so recent in, you know, on Earth. Like there's countless other planets that have probably all kinds of life forms, multi-cellular perhaps, and so on and so forth. Um, but the fact that humanity has only been listening and emitting for just this tiny little blink, means that any of these, you know, alien civilizations would need to be paying attention to every single insignificant planet out there. And, you know, again, I mean, the movie Contact and the, the book, is just so beautiful, this whole concept of we don't need to travel physically. We can travel as light. We can send instructions for people to create machines that will allow us to beam down light and recreate ourselves. And in the book, you know, the aliens actually take over. (laughs)

   13. LFLex Fridman59:08

       Yes.

   14. MKManolis Kellis59:08

       They're not as friendly. But, you know, this concept that we have to eventually go and conquer every planet, I mean, I, I think that yes, we will become a galactic species.

   15. LFLex Fridman59:18

       So you, you have a hope?

   16. MKManolis Kellis59:20

       Um ...

   17. LFLex Fridman59:20

       Well, you said think, so.

   18. MKManolis Kellis59:21

       Oh, oh, of course, of course.

   19. LFLex Fridman59:23

       Hope and-

   20. MKManolis Kellis59:23

       I mean, now that we've made it so far.

   21. LFLex Fridman59:25

       You, we, so you feel like we've made it?

   22. MKManolis Kellis59:27

       I ... Oh, gosh. I feel that, you know, cognition-

   23. LFLex Fridman59:30

       Have you heard-

   24. MKManolis Kellis59:30

       ... the cognition as an evolutionary trait, has won over in, in our planet. There's no doubt that we've made it. So basically humans have won the battle for, you know, uh, dominance. It wasn't necessarily the case with dinosaurs. Like, I mean, yes, you know, there's some claims of, uh, intelligence and if you look at Jurassic Park, yeah, sure, whatever.

   25. LFLex Fridman59:53

       (laughs)

   26. MKManolis Kellis59:53

       Um, but, you know, they just don't have the hardware for it.

   27. LFLex Fridman59:57

       Yeah.

   28. MKManolis Kellis59:58

       And humans have the hardware. There's no doubt that mammals have a dramatically improved hardware for cognition over dinosaurs. Like basically, there's universes where strength won out. And in our planet, in our, you know, particular version of whatever happened in this planet, cognition won out. And it's kind of cool. I mean, it's, it's a privilege, right?

   29. LFLex Fridman1:00:20

       But-

   30. MKManolis Kellis1:00:20

       It's kind of like living in Boston instead of, I don't know, uh, some, um, middle, uh, middle-aged, uh, place where everybody's like hitting each other with s- with, uh, you know, some, uh, weapons and sticks.
7. 1:08:22 – 1:10:15

   Mars

   1. MKManolis Kellis1:08:22

      at all.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:08:22

      Are you excited by the possibility of a human s- well, one, the human stepping foot on Mars? And two, possible colonization of, not necessarily Mars, but other planets and all that kind of stuff for people living in space?

   3. MKManolis Kellis1:08:36

      Inevitable.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:08:37

      Inevitable.

   5. MKManolis Kellis1:08:37

      Inevitable.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:08:38

      Would you do it?

   7. MKManolis Kellis1:08:39

      Of course.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:08:39

      Or are you kind of like Earth?

   9. MKManolis Kellis1:08:40

      Of course.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:08:40

       Wait. (laughs)

   11. MKManolis Kellis1:08:41

       In a heartbeat. (laughs)

   12. LFLex Fridman1:08:41

       How many, how many people will you wait? Will you wait for, I think it was about when the, the D- the Declaration of Ind- Independence was signed is about two to three million people lived here. So would you move, like, before? Would you be, like, uh, on the first boat? Would you be on the 10th boat? Would you wait until the Declaration of Independence?

   13. MKManolis Kellis1:09:00

       I don't think I'll be on the short list because I'll be old by then. They'll probably get a bunch of younger people.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:09:06

       But you're ... It's the ...

   15. MKManolis Kellis1:09:07

       (laughs)

   16. LFLex Fridman1:09:08

       (laughs) It's the wisdom and the, uh, the ... But w- then again you are the lucky one.

   17. MKManolis Kellis1:09:12

       But wisdom can be transferred horizontally.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:09:13

       You, I, I gotta tell you, you are the lucky one so you might be on the list. I don't know.

   19. MKManolis Kellis1:09:16

       I, I mean, I-

   20. LFLex Fridman1:09:17

       You never know.

   21. MKManolis Kellis1:09:17

       ... I, I kind of feel like I would love to see Earth from above, just to watch our planet. I mean, just, I mean, you know you can watch a live feed of the, uh, space station. Watching Earth is magnificent, like this blue, tiny little shield. It's so thin, our atmosphere. Like, if you drive to New York, you're basically in outer space. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's just so thin. And it's just, again, such a privilege to be on this planet. Such a privilege. But I think our species is in for big, good things. (laughs)

   22. LFLex Fridman1:09:54

       (laughs)

   23. MKManolis Kellis1:09:54

       I think that, uh, you know, we will overcome our little problems and eventually come together as a species. I feel that we've, we've, we're definitely on the path to that. And, you know, it's n- just not permeated through the whole universe yet, I mean, through the whole world yet, through the whole Earth yet, but it's definitely permeating.

8. 1:10:15 – 1:21:08

   Human mind and the abstraction layers of reality

   1. MKManolis Kellis1:10:15

   2. LFLex Fridman1:10:15

      So you've talked about humans as special. How exactly are we special relative to the dinosaurs?

   3. MKManolis Kellis1:10:24

      So I mentioned that there's, um, you know, this dramatic cognitive improvement that we've made. But I think it goes much deeper than that. So if you look at a lion attacking a gazelle in the middle of the Serengeti. The lion is smelling the molecules in the environment. Its, uh, hormones and neuroreceptors are sort of getting it ready for impulse.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:10:53

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MKManolis Kellis1:10:54

      The target is constantly looking around and sensing. I've actually been in Kenya-

   6. LFLex Fridman1:11:00

      (laughs)

   7. MKManolis Kellis1:11:00

      ... and I've kind of seen the hunt.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:11:03

      Yes.

   9. MKManolis Kellis1:11:03

      So I've kind of seen the sort of game of waiting. And the mitochondria in the muscles of the lion are basically ready for, you know, jumping.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:11:18

       Mm-hmm.

   11. MKManolis Kellis1:11:18

       They're expensing an enormous amount of energy. The grass, as it's flowing, is constantly transforming solar energy into chloroplasts, you know, through the chloroplast into energy, which eventually feeds the gazelle and eventually feeds the lions and so on and so forth. So as humans, we experience all of that. But the lion only experiences one layer. The mitochondria in its body are only experiencing one layer. The chloroplasts are only experiencing one layer. The, you know, photoreceptors and the smell receptors and the chemical receptors, like the lion always attacks against the wind, so that it's not smelled. Like, all of these things are one layer at a time. And we humans somehow perceive the whole stack. So going back to software infrastructure and hardware infrastructure, if you design a computer, you basically have a physical layer that you start with, and then on top of that physical layer, you have, you know, the electrical layer, and on top of the electrical layer, you have basically gates and logic and an assembly layer, and on top of the assembly layer, you have your, you know, higher order, higher level programming, and on top of that, you have your deep learning r- routine, et cetera. And on top of that, you eventually build a cognitive system, uh, that's smart. I want you to now picture this cognitive system becoming not just self-aware, but also becoming aware of the hardware that it's made of, and the atoms that they're, that it's made of and so on and so forth. So it's as if your AI system, and there's this beautiful scene in, um...... uh, 2001: Odyssey of Space, where, where, uh, HAL-

   12. LFLex Fridman1:13:10

       Yeah.

   13. MKManolis Kellis1:13:10

       ... after, uh, Dave starts disconnecting him-

   14. LFLex Fridman1:13:12

       Yes.

   15. MKManolis Kellis1:13:13

       ... is starting to sing a song about daisies, et cetera. And HAL is basically saying, "Dave, I'm losing my mind. I can feel I'm losing my mind."

   16. LFLex Fridman1:13:26

       Yeah.

   17. MKManolis Kellis1:13:26

       It's just so beautiful. This concept of self-awareness-

   18. LFLex Fridman1:13:30

       Mm-hmm.

   19. MKManolis Kellis1:13:30

       ... of knowing that the hardware is no longer there, is amazing. And in the same way, humans who have had accidents are aware that they've had accidents. So there's this self-awareness of AI, uh, that, um, is, you know, this beautiful concept about, you know, sort of the eventual cognitive leap to self-awareness. But imagine now the AI system actually breaking through these layers and saying, "Wait a minute, I think I can design a slightly better hardware to get me functioning better." And that's what basically humans are doing. So if you, if you look at our reasoning layer, it's built on top of a cognitive layer. And the reasoning layer we share with AI. It's kind of cool.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:14:14

       Mm-hmm.

   21. MKManolis Kellis1:14:14

       Like, there is another thing on the planet that can integrate equations-

   22. LFLex Fridman1:14:17

       Mm-hmm.

   23. MKManolis Kellis1:14:18

       ... and it's manmade. But we share computation with them. We share this cognitive layer of playing chess. We're not alone anymore. We're not the only thing on the planet that plays chess. Now we have AI that also plays chess.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:14:31

       But in some sense that, that particular organism, AI as it is now, only operates in that layer.

   25. MKManolis Kellis1:14:36

       Exactly. Exactly. And then most animals operate in the sort of cognitive layer that we're all experiencing. A bat is doing this incredible integration of signals, but it's not aware of it. It's basically constantly sending echolocation waves, and it's receiving them back. And multiple bats in the same cave are operating at slightly different frequencies and with slightly different pulses. And they're all sensing objects and they're doing motion planning in their cognitive hardware. But they're not even aware of all of that.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:15:10

       Mm-hmm.

   27. MKManolis Kellis1:15:10

       All they know is that they have a 3D view of space around them, just like any gazelle walking through, you know, the desert, and any, um, baby looking around is aware of things without doing the math of, "How am I processing all of this visual information," et cetera. We are just aware of the layer that you live in. I think if you look at this, uh, uh, at humanity, we've basically managed through our cognitive layer, through our perception layer, through our senses layer, through our multi-organ layer, through our genetic layer, through our molecular layer, through our atomic layer-

   28. LFLex Fridman1:15:51

       Mm-hmm.

   29. MKManolis Kellis1:15:52

       ... through our quantum layer, through even the very fabric of the spacetime continuum, unite all of that cognitively. So as we're watching that scene in the Serengeti, we as scientists, we as educated humans, we as, you know, anyone who's finished high school, are aware of all of this beauty, of all of these different layers interplaying together. And I think that's something very unique in perhaps not just the galaxy, but maybe even the cosmos. This species that has managed to, in space, cross through these layers from the enormous to the infinitely small. And that's what I love about particle physics.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:16:33

       Mm-hmm.
9. 1:21:08 – 1:28:25

   Neural networks and intelligence

   1. LFLex Fridman1:21:08

      possibility.

   2. MKManolis Kellis1:21:08

      What I love about AI and the way that it operates right now is the fact that it is unpredictable. There's emergent behavior in our cognitively capable artificial systems that we can certainly model, but we don't encode directly. And that's a, a key difference. So we like to say, "Oh, pfft, of course this is not really intelligent because we coded it up."

   3. LFLex Fridman1:21:38

      Mm-hmm.

   4. MKManolis Kellis1:21:38

      "And we've just put in these little parameters there and there's like s- you know, uh, 6 billion parameters and once you've learned them, you know, we kind of understand the layers." But that's an oversimplification. It's, it's like saying, "Oh, of course, pfft, humans. We understand humans. They're just made out of neurons and, you know, layers of cortex and there's a visual, uh, area and there's a..." But, but every human is encoded by a ridiculously small number of genes compared to the complexity of our cognitive apparatus. 20,000 genes is really not that much, out of which a tiny little fraction are in fact encoding all of our cognitive functions. The rest is emergent behavior.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:22:19

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MKManolis Kellis1:22:19

      The rest is the, you know, the, the, the cortical layers doing their thing.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:22:26

      Mm-hmm.

   8. MKManolis Kellis1:22:26

      In the same way that when we build, you know, these conversational systems or these cognitive systems or these deep learning systems, we put the architecture in place, but then they do their thing. And in some ways, that's creating something that has its own identity, that's creating something that's not just, oh yeah, it's not the, the early AI where if you hadn't programmed what happens in the grocery bags when you have both cold and hot and hard and soft, you know, the system wouldn't know what to do. No. No. You basically now just program the primitives and then it e- learns from that.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:22:59

      So even though the origins are humble, just like it is for our genetic code, uh, for AI, even though the origins are humble, the, the, uh, the, the result of it being deployed into the world is infinitely complex. And that's... (sighs) And yet there's not, uh, it's not yet able to be cognizant of all the other layers in, uh, uh, of its... you know, it's not a, uh, it's not able to think about, uh, space and time. It's not able to think about the hardware on which it runs, the electricity on which it runs yet.

   10. MKManolis Kellis1:23:38

       So, so if you look at humans, we basically have the same cognitive architecture as monkeys, as the great apes. It's just a ton more of it.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:23:48

       Mm-hmm.

   12. MKManolis Kellis1:23:49

       If you look at, um, GPT-3-

   13. LFLex Fridman1:23:51

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MKManolis Kellis1:23:51

       ... versus GPT-2, again, it's the same architecture, just more of it, and yet it's able to do so much more.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:23:58

       Yeah.

   16. MKManolis Kellis1:23:59

       So if you start thinking about sort of what's the future of that, GPT-4 and GPT-5, do you really need fundamentally different architectures or do you just need a ton more hardware? And we do have a ton more hardware. Like these systems are nowhere near what humans have between our ears. So, uh, you know, there's something to be said about stay tuned for emergent behavior. We keep thinking that general intelligence might just be forever away, but it could just simply be that we just need a ton more hardware and that humans are just not that different from the great apes except for just a ton more of it.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:24:38

       Yeah. It's, it's interesting that in the AI community, maybe there's a human-centric fear, but the notion that GPT-10 will be, uh, will achieve general intelligence is something that people shy away from, that there has to be something totally different and new added to this. And yet it's not seriously considered that, um, this, this very simple thing, this very simple architecture when scaled might be the thing that achieves superintelligence.

   18. MKManolis Kellis1:25:09

       And people think the same way about humanity and human consciousness. They're like, "Oh, consciousness might be quantum or it might be, you know, some, some-"

   19. LFLex Fridman1:25:17

       Yeah.

   20. MKManolis Kellis1:25:17

       "... non-physical thing."

   21. LFLex Fridman1:25:18

       Yeah.

   22. MKManolis Kellis1:25:18

       And it's like...Or it could just be a lot more of the same hardware that now is sufficiently capable of self-awareness, just because it has the neurons to do it. So maybe the consciousness that is so elusive is an emergent behavior of you basically string together all these cognitive capabilities that come from running, from seeing, from reacting, from predicting the movement of a fly as you're catching it through the air. All of these things are just like great lookup tables encoded in a giant neural network. I mean, I'm oversimplifying, of course. The complexity and the diversity of the different types of excitatory and inhibitory neurons, the waveforms that sort of shine through the, you know, the, the, the connections across all those different layers, the amalgamation of signals, etc. The brain is enormously complex. I, I mean, of course. But again, it's a small number of primitives encoded by a tiny number of genes, which are self-organized and shaped by their environment. Babies that are growing up today are listening to language from conception. Basically, as soon as the auditory apparatus forms, it's already getting shaped to the types of signals that are out in the real world today. So it's not just like, oh, have an Egyptian be born and then ship them over. It's like, no, that, that Egyptian would be listening in to the complexity of the world and then getting born and sort of seeing just how much more complex the world is. So it's a combination of the underlying hardware, which if you think about, as a geneticist, in my view, the hardware gives you an upper bound of cognitive capabilities, but it's the environment that makes those c-capabilities shine and reach their maximum. So we're a combination of nature and nurture. The nature is our genes and our cognitive apparatus, and the nurture is the richness of the environment that makes that cognitive apparatus reach its potential. And we are so far from reaching our full potential. So far. I think that kids being born 100 years from now, they'll be looking at, at us now and saying, "What primitive educational systems they had. I can't believe people were not wired into this-"

   23. LFLex Fridman1:27:39

       (laughs) .

   24. MKManolis Kellis1:27:39

       "... you know, virtual reality from birth as we are now, 'cause like they're clearly inferior," and so on and so forth. So I, I, basically, I think that our environment will continue exploding and our cognitive capabilities, it's not like, "Oh, we're only using 10% of our brain." That's ridiculous. Of course, we're using 100% of our brain. But it's still constrained by how complex our environment is.

   25. LFLex Fridman1:28:02

       So the hardware will remain the same, but the software e- in a quickly advancing environment, the software will make a huge difference in the nature of like the human experience, the human condition. It's fascinating to think that humans will look very different 100 years from now, just because the environment changed, even though we're still the same great apes, the, the descendant of apes.

10. 1:28:25 – 1:37:49

    Ideas as organisms

    1. LFLex Fridman1:28:25

       At the core of this is kind of a notion of ideas that, uh, I don't know if you're... There's a lot of people that's including you, eloquently, about this topic, but Richard Dawkins talks about, uh, the notion of memes, and let's say this notion of ideas, uh, uh, you know, multiplying, selecting in the minds of humans. Do you ever think from, about ideas from the, from that perspective, ideas as, as organisms themselves that are bre- breeding in the minds of humans?

    2. MKManolis Kellis1:28:57

       I love the concept of memes. I love the concept of these horizontal transfer of ideas and sort of permeating through, through, you know, our layer of interconnected neural networks. So you can think of sort of the cognitive space that has now connected all of humanity, where we are now one giant information and idea sharing network, well beyond what was thought to be ever capable when the concept of a meme was created by Richard Dawkins. So, but I wanna take that concept just, uh, you know, in- into another twist, which is the horizontal transfer of humans with fellowships.

Episode duration: 2:10:56